J. Adam Hawkins '11

February 4, 2011

Four years
ago, J. Adam Hawkins ’11 knew he wanted to go to college to play football and get
a good education. The Tulsa, Okla., native had narrowed his choices to Johns
Hopkins University and DePauw before a trip to Greencastle sealed the deal.

“When I
visited DePauw, people were a lot like they are in Oklahoma – laid-back and
nice – and so I kind of fell in love with this place,” Hawkins says. “It seemed
like a place where I could sink my teeth into anything I wanted to do.”

The community
that shaped his choice to become a Tiger also set him on a new path he's still following.

As a
freshman, Hawkins joined the football team in its annual participation in the
Special Olympics. The service work gave him a sense of satisfaction that he had
not experienced before, and volunteering quickly became a habit. He has since been
a regular volunteer at the A-Way Home Shelter in Greencastle and served as
community service chair for his fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega, where he is team
captain for the Putnam County Relay for Life.

During Winter
Term 2011, Hawkins joined a group of students, professors and medical
professionals who traveled to Ecuador as part of a medical brigade from Timmy
Foundation, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that provides access to education
and healthcare in Central America and South America. Although thousands of
miles away, home was never far away – Hawkins’ mother, a nurse practitioner,
traveled with the group, as well. More than just a service trip, Ecuador was
the latest a in a series of professional trial runs for Hawkins, who hopes to
practice medicine.

“The doctors
I’ve spoken with stress that you have to be 100 percent sure that you want to
join the profession because it’s such a long, hard road,” Hawkins says. “I've shadowed
in an emergency room and volunteered in shelters to see if I could handle the
side of being a doctor that isn’t on Grey’s Anatomy. There were some things
that I wasn't prepared for, but I found myself thinking that these were people
whom I wanted to be able to help.”

If Hawkins
entered his senior year with any doubts about his future, the Winter Term trip
to Ecuador put them behind him for good.

“I feel an
intense calling to global health,” Hawkins says. “I hope to someday start an
organization that not only serves vulnerable people across the world, but also
provides undergraduate and high school students the opportunity to experience
global health on such a personal level. Without the Timmy Foundation and Winter
Term opportunity, I don’t know that I would have realized how important this is
to me.”

At his free
safety position on the gridiron, Hawkins’ job was to diagnose the play and
decide how to react, often in just a fraction of a second. And as the last line
of defense, any misstep is guaranteed to be noticed. For doctors, the stakes
are even higher.

But Hawkins
has thrived under pressure, both on and off the field. He is member of Chi
Alpha Sigma, the National College Athlete Honor Society, and was named to the
Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Academic Honor Roll. His drive to be
the best, combined with his passion for helping those in need, is a
prescription for success.

“Football taught me that I could be the best
by being the hardest worker,” Hawkins says. “I’ve tried to apply the same thing
to the classroom and in the community. It’s part of my competitiveness. At the
end of the day, I’ll always know that I did everything I could to be the best
that I can be.”